Recent Tasting Notes

Today (for you who’ve asked me for updates), my local tea shop launched their product website! Happy Lucky’s is online!www.happyluckys.com
There are tea’s and something else…herbs and spices in bulk. I use these ingredients for making blends (especially the cocoa hulls,dry ginger and cinnamon chips).

Here’s an example of how I create my own blend from a box I created with the herbs and spices from Happy Lucky’s Tea Wall:

Lately, I’ve been enjoying pieces off my 2000 CNNP Yellow Ripe Beeng. After only one steep, the puerh releases a smooth rich velvet coat with hints of vanilla-spice.
Yesterday, I had a medical procedure and could only drink tea for 24 hours before with no milk. So I blended a good chunk of puerh (4 grams broken), 1TB cocoa hulls, a few cinnamon chips and dry ginger with a teaspoon of Laoshan Black Oolong (optional). For the 24oz pot I use about 1.5-2TB tea blend.
One quick rinse and steep for 2-3 minutes. Sweetened or not, this is a delicious blend! Smooth and just spicy enough without going too far!
I steeped again 3 more times during the day!
If you’re looking for a really good base for blending that’s smooth enough to drink on it’s own, this is the puerh!

At least if you click on the virtual tour (on the map I think) you’ll see the source of my stories sitting on the stool at the bar. Remember that this was once a firehouse (notice the poll) and was the model for the firehouse on Main Street USA Disneyland.

I received a whole Beeng as a Christmas gift and was both surprised (stunned) and delighted! Thank you!

This was an easy pry with my Pu’er pick. The leaves were dry and ready for lifting in shale-like sheets. I placed about 30 grams into a stainless tea canister and topped the container with chemical free paper so the Pu’er could breathe.

The leaves reserved in my Gaiwan smelled dusty, so I rinsed them twice.

Steep times were 20 seconds in the beginning, increasing to 45 seconds by the 5th.

The liquor was light honey brown, increasing rapidly through each infusion to dark honey gold then russet gold.

Before I picked up the leaves to smell, or my cup to drink…I could smell a savory aroma. Short ribs, so savory and meaty that I was instantly hungry.

When I took a sip of the tea, there was a clean flavor like the watery taste of bean sprouts that was so smooth and carried on for a long time…then finished with a sprinkle of nutmeg.

Steeping a little longer, there was black pepper and more savory flavor. The taste that lasted was stuffing. Chicken-herb stuffing with the tang of cranberry (probably was cedar in reality) at the finish.

The savory super flavor couldn’t be sustained. I was beginning to pick up more cedar-wood tang, which is a familiar Pu’er taste.

By the 5th steep, the tea had become elegant, velvety and smooth. The flavors melted on the tongue, dripping wet with salty savory and tangy cedar flavor so light that my brain couldn’t separate the one from the other.
I felt a flash like the fire in a ruby. A thrill. (When you drink something so good your body sometimes reacts before your mind can give words to it.)

A great experience with a hunk of dry brown tea leaves that finished with leading me to write!

After drinking the tea, I took a mental journey back long ago (25 years or so) when I traveled high up into the Andes with my cousin
(she was born in Peru). I wrote most of the day about the adventures we had in Huaraz, Peru. Might put it on the blog sometime.

Tea does this for me. Gets my memory going, and creates the proper peace for creativity.

Tried the offering from the cnnp factory tonight. This brews up incredibly dark and with a sweetness almost like a touch of molasses. It is as dark as a cup of coffee and packs a pretty good punch in the flavor department. It is very multifaceted with lots of flavor notes. Coffee, molasses, dark sugarcane and an almost raisin note. A pretty good one so far. Preparation in a yixing almost boiling water, ten second wash and a fifteen second steep.